Path of Spirit (Disgardium Book #6): LitRPG Series, Dan Sugralinov [the reader ebook .TXT] 📗

the town hall. Ehehe planned to go meet them, but I placed a hand on his shoulder to hold him back:

“Wait! I’m glad things ended up well for you, Ehehe.”

“Huh? What do you mean?”

“Nothing…” I fell silent, deciding not to admit outright that we’d met before. “By the way, thanks for the beer you treated me to! Remember Murphy? Take this, it’s a gift.”

I pushed a legendary shield that had been lying around in my bag into the stunned guard’s hands and winked to him, then threw on Cloak Essence and shot up into the clouds. When he realized what had happened, he shouted something and waved, but I was already soaring into the sky and couldn’t see the details.

From a bird’s-eye view, a cloud of dust was clearly visible, streaming across the ground as if a dust storm galloped toward the city. I saw flashes of wings, paws, heads, tails. Raised basilisks, scorpids, desert hermits, a couple of rotting giants, several gigantic worms and two dozen vultures, loyal to the Supreme Legate of the Destroying Plague, careered toward the fort and swept aside all in their path. It was hard to count precisely, but there were around a hundred beasts, which meant Mogwai had leveled up Plague Reanimation to level 10. Worse, he was almost at level 500! He worked fast. It seemed that after suffering so many defeats, he decided not to keep banging his head against a wall, but instead to gain enough power to exceed mine, and only then pay me another visit — Kharinza wasn’t going anywhere, after all. And if I didn’t show to defend the temple, I’d lose both it and my abilities from the Sleeping Gods. I understood his thinking.

Thanks to my heightened Perception, I didn’t have to get close to copy his form. A second later, there were two Mogwais in the location. The second, fake one dropped down like a stone on the original, activating Depths Teleportation a second before impact.

A moment of travel — and Mogwai and I were in the blocking cell in the basement of the main Modus castle. My stomach leaped into my throat from the sickening stench emanating from the dead man in my embrace.

“God damn it, no! Not again!” Mogwai erupted, trying to break away from me. “You bastard, Scyth! Asshole! You’re all done for! You and all your…”

Before the undead druid could do anything, I fired off Hammerfist and flattened his already rotting nose into his skull. The second strike I delivered as an uppercut to the chin, crushing it and driving shards of teeth into his brain. Mogwai felt no pain, but growled and fell silent — it was hard to yell with a crushed jaw.

Yary the Knight and Sayan the Paladin snapped a spiky metal Collar of Subjugation around his neck and bound his limbs in manacles. Only then did Mogwai, looking around, realize who was helping me. But his reaction surprised me — he burst into screeching laughter and shouted, slurring his words:

“You got into bed with Modus? You idiot, Scyth! They’ll chew you up and spit you out! You’re even dumber than I thought if you trust Hinterleaf!”

“Want me to shut him up?” Sayan asked.

“No need, let him shout. Maybe he’ll tell us something important,” Yary answered.

Mogwai kept on ranting, but I had places to be. I exchanged nods with the Modus officers, then climbed out of the cage. Yary and Sayan stayed behind — the paladin wanted to test some spells from his arsenal of light magic on the legate.

In the dull dry corridor lit with torches of True Flame, Blackberry was waiting for me. I’d already been here twice: while saving Crag, and the previous night, when Hinterleaf showed me the blocking cage for Mogwai.

Smiling a little guiltily, Blackberry nodded for me to follow her. At the exit from the basement, Hinterleaf paced the corridor anxiously. He gasped when he saw me disguised as Mogwai, stopped and stretched out a hand shrouded with threatening sparks.

“Two crocodiles fly…” the gnome began the code phrase.

“One green, the other northwards,” I finished, and he relaxed and broke off his cast. “Dumb password,” I said. “What does it mean?”

“Don’t look for meaning where there is none,” Hinterleaf smiled. “How did it all go?”

“Piece of cake. He wasn’t looking up at all. Mogwai is done. We’ll bait out the others next. Any news on Eileen?”

“We’re looking,” the gnome answered. “What about the others, where do we send them? To the goblins? We can’t split our forces, but if necessary, we can prepare two cells in other castles.”

“If the League has enough time to make cells for them all, then yeah, the goblins. What about the Travelers?”

“They’re involved,” a thick, low voice said from the shadows behind a column. A massive orc with sharpened fangs emerged into the light. “Nice to meet you, Scyth. I’m Horvac.”

“I know,” I answered, shaking his club-like hand. “We’ve fought before, Mr. Onegut.”

 

 

Chapter 13. Kill the Dead Man!

THE BIGGEST MARKET in Dis was the Kinema Bazaar, but Darant’s Market Square, though smaller, had about the same density of sentients per square foot. From a bird’s-eye view it looked like a murky seething river, but the lower I flew, the more details and colors I made out. First I could pick out bright hats, then heads — long-eared, bald, furry, mohawked, adorned with tiaras.

I chose the center of the square as a landing site, next to the well. The crowd’s attention was on me the moment I landed. Voices rose. The people whispering to each other: Mogwai, The dead man!, The undead are here! I had to wait a couple of minutes for it to die down.

Glancing at myself, I grimaced. I’d forgotten to turn off my sense of smell, and now I could smell my own stinking flesh.